‘No!’ She began laughing like a pixie. ‘I just couldn’t get up, so I shuffled me old bum over here against the sofa to see if I could pull meself up on the seat, but I can’t quite manage it. Hopeless, I am!’

‘Heave-ho, then!’ I grabbed her little hands, blue-veined and skeletal as claws, and pulled her up on to her sofa. She weighed next to nothing. ‘Why are you still in your dressing gown? Hasn’t the girl from the agency been?’ It was close on twelve o’clock and an agency carer was supposed to come in between eight and nine each morning to help Maisie bathe and dress. She had difficulty getting her old bones going in the morning and if someone didn’t give her breakfast, she’d forget to eat. She’d happily go through the day on a diet of tea and biscuits if I let her get away with it.

‘Not yet,’ she answered, unconcerned, ‘but she comes a different time every morning. And it’s not always her. Sometimes it’s another one.’

‘I’ll make you a cup of tea.’ It wouldn’t be the carer’s fault she was late. I’d worked briefly for a care agency and I knew the timetable was impossible.

‘What do you want for breakfast?’ I picked up soggy and dried-out teabags from around the kitchen floor. ‘You’re not very good at lobbing these in the bin, are you?’

‘No,’ she admitted happily. ‘I’ll have a piece of toast.’

I popped a slice in the toaster, bagged up the rubbish and took it outside. By the time I’d returned and put a fresh liner in the bin, the toast had popped up and Maisie had used her remote to switch on the television news. ‘Who’s that?’ she pointed at the screen. ‘He’s always on, I don’t like him.’

I glanced over my shoulder at the television as I spread the butter. ‘That’s the foreign secretary, Maisie.’

‘Wanker!’ she pronounced darkly.

I paused in mid-spread. ‘What do you want on this toast?’

‘Oh, I don’t mind.’

‘We’ll make it marmalade, then.’

I don’t know what the foreign secretary was talking about, but he caused Maisie to nod wisely and declare, ‘Bad blood will out.’

God, I hope not, I thought to myself. When you’re not sure what’s running in your own veins, it’s not a comforting thought.

At that moment a pretty girl in a blue overall hurtled in through the front door. Jacko launched an immediate assault on her ankles but I distracted him by rattling a packet of dog biscuits and hauling him off by his collar.

‘Hello, Maria!’ Maisie called out, waving her toast. ‘You all right, darling?’